Comment by sonofhans | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sonofhans | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah, but why is that? Consider: I can repair a 1980 Mercedes with one box of tools I can carry. Spend a couple years with your dad working on old cars and you could, too.

For a 2024 Mercedes I don’t think I’m even allowed to know what’s wrong with it. Hardly anything in modern cars is user-serviceable. Can I replace the airbags? Change their timing or velocity? Alter parameters of the antilock brakes, or emissions control? No way, never. Many of those systems have to be replaced wholesale by people specially trained.

The same argument holds, and for similar reasons, with phones. Anyone with a screwdriver could service an old Bell phone. Today it’s almost impossible to take most of them apart at all without destroying them, and the majority of their function is completely invisible and untouchable anyway (software).

We’ve added a huge amount of technology not just to vehicles, but to the tools we use to maintain them. Of course labor will be more expensive as it gets more specialized. Of course parts will be more expensive as they get more capable and more complex.

None of that gets to the question of why a brake job specifically costs so much, which is why I used it as an example. Brakes are no harder to do than 3 decades ago (at least for my car). They cost a lot because of the cost of labour, primarily. Other work has different costs.

The primary basis of your argument falls flat for me though. You don't need to repair new cars as much as you did 40 years ago. You never need to mess with your carburetor, spark plugs last a decade+, other stuff tends not to fail at nearly the rate it used to. My current car has 11 years and 250000 km on it, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to do any service aside from oil changes. (aside: why would I ever want to adjust airbag timing? And yes, if I somehow need to replace an airbag, I'll happily pay someone certified to do it. And if I buy a secondhand car, I'd really like to know that the person before me couldn't change airbag timing or velocity)

I do feel a sense of foreboding when it comes to choosing my next vehicle though. I want a BEV, but they all have so much electronic junk in that I fiind to be actively detrimental. I recently drove a friend's (2017) Toyota for a weekend, some ice built up on the sensor (in the badge on the front bumper). The following day, when roads were clear, it wouldn't let me use regular cruise control because the sensor was still iced over. A different toyota wouldn't let me cross the lane lines to avoid a pothole. They'll both slow me well below the speed limit on the highway based on the car ahead of me, with no notification. I would pay more for a car with these "features" removed.

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